Upcoming Changes to the Immigration Law regarding Tier 2 General Leave to Remain Applications

£364
per year for small or charitable sponsors (your annual turnover is
£10.2 million or less and you have 50 employees or fewer)

It will be payable upfront and for the total period of time covered by the certificate of sponsorship.

Are you liable to pay?

Subject
to parliamentary approval, legislation expected to come into force on 6
April 2017 means that you may be required to the Immigration Skills
Charge where you sponsor a worker from outside the European Economic Area (EEA).

The skills charge will apply to a sponsor of a
Tier 2 worker assigned a certificate of sponsorship in the ‘General’ or
‘Intra-company Transfer’ route and who will be applying from:

outside the UK for a visa

inside the UK to switch to this visa from another

inside the UK to extend their existing visa

You are not liable if you are sponsoring…

a
non-EEA national who was sponsored in Tier 2 before 6 April 2017 and is
applying from inside the UK to extend their Tier 2 stay with either the
same sponsor or a different sponsor

a Tier 2 (Intra-company Transfer) Graduate Trainee

a worker to do a specified PhD level occupation

a Tier 4 student visa holder in the UK switching to a Tier 2 (General) visa

EXEMPTION!
Workers family members (PBS Dependants) are exempt from this skills charge!!

Information on the overseas criminal record certificate requirement

From
April 2017, the Government plans to extend the requirement to provide a
criminal record certificate to Tier 2 visa applicants coming to work in
education, health and social care sectors and to their adult
dependants.

The extension of this requirement will strengthen safeguards against those with a criminal history seeking to come to the UK.

Applicants subject to this requirement will need to submit a criminal
record certificate from each country in which they have resided
continuously or cumulatively for 12 months or more in the 10 years
before making their application. Their adult dependants will also be
subject to this requirement.